Word: cecill
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Died. Dr. Joseph Cecil Patrick, 72, a chemist who, while searching for a cheap antifreeze in 1923, stumbled on the formula for Thiokol, first U.S.-developed synthetic rubber, which has since become an indispensable ingredient of solid rocket fuel; of a heart attack; in Philadelphia...
...David Cecil. 507 pages. Houghton Mifflin...
Touching Glimpses. Now Lord David Cecil, whose earlier works apostrophized such eminences as Melbourne, Dickens, Cowper, Thackeray and Hardy, has lighted a long memorial candle for little Max. It is entirely a labor of love, suggested to him by Lady Beerbohm in 1956, the year Max died. "She told me," says Cecil in the preface, "that her husband had wished me to write his biography." Cecil regarded it as both an honor and a command...
Discharging the commission proved difficult in one respect. "Max's life was so uneventful," Biographer Cecil soon discovered, "that it is almost impossible to make a story of it." Max took the role of elegant bystander, frequenting the best tables, polishing a few literary trifles, contentedly obscure in the shadow of greater men. In 1910, at 38, he married Florence Kahn, a painfully shy American actress, and left England for Rapallo, Italy. Forty-six years later, still in retirement, he died...
This undramatic story is warmed by the affection that Biographer Cecil clearly felt for Max and that Max so easily kindled in all who knew him. The book is much too long, fleshed out by generous excerpts from the Beerbohm works, each analyzed and explained to the point of tedium. But in between, there are touching glimpses of the top-hatted dandy whose means were as slender as his gifts: the impeccable Max was compelled to iron his own suits...